New Plants from Cuttings (Malabar Spinach)

I purchased three Malabar Spinach plants at a plant sale back in early June, and as I mentioned before, we really like it. But even with it’s fast growth rate, we eat it faster than it grows. So i wanted more plants.

A quick check verified for me my suspicions that it grows very well from cuttings. So off I went to grab some to test it out.

Finding a suitable section to use was very simple, as the entire plant has sprouted limbs all over the place. Random off-shoots stick out every 4-6 inches, and make the climbing vine look very unruly. I simply took a couple that were not cooperating with my attempts at keeping it trellised, and used them.

As a test, I planted two of those into the dirt directly. They both took fine, and seem to have made the rest of this post irrelevant. But at the time, I didn’t know, so I took the rest back into the house for my test.

Taking a bottle of rooting agent, the cuttings, a short glass, and some water, I was attempting to get a rooted cutting to use for expanding my production of the tasty leafy green.

The steps are simple.

1. Take a cutting, making sure the cut end is moist, dip the end into the rooting agent, covering it liberally. (This bottle of rooting agent has been with me for over 4 years now, and I’ve still got about 90% of the original amount left.)

2. Take the treated cutting and put it into a container of water, as though it were a flower cutting.

3. Wait.

4. Ten days later, you get this:

That’s it. Really.

This works for many varieties of plants, some better than others. I use this method for sweet potatoes all the time, simply taking a cutting off the vine the exact same way.

So go improve that garden yield by increasing the number of plants you are growing in your garden.